[GOAL] Re: Jeffrey Beall Needlessly Compromises Credibility of Beall's List

[David Prosser]

>  
> 1)    The focus of OA seems to be, to a considerable extent, the destruction of the publishing industry:  note the hostile language of, for example, Peter M-R's 'occupying power'
>  
No, the focus of OA is maximising the possible use and re-use of research outputs. Yes, the language can get 'hostile' but in general that is directed at those institutions and organisations that will apparently do anything they can to stop OA.  Many of us have spent over 10 years describing how a publishing industry can flourish in an OA world.  It may be that the participants in a future publishing industry are not the same as the participants in the publishing industry of the past, but there are few OA advocates (although they do exist) who believe that there is no role for publishers.

> 2)    It still seems curious to me (as to Beall) that scholars have to be forced, by mandates, to comply with a behaviour which is considered be self-evidently beneficial to them

There are precedents for this, the classic one being authors depositing genome and sequence data.  Everybody does it now as a matter of course and everybody see the benefits.  But it didn't happen overnight because authors spontaneous changed their behaviour and started doing something that was self-evidently beneficial to them and their community.  They did it because influencial and powerful journal editors decided that it would be a condition of publication.  It was a mandate - we won't publish you unless you deposit the data.  There are many cases where we need nudges to get us to do things that are to our advantage.

David



On 13 Dec 2013, at 13:14, Sally Morris wrote:

> I don't deny that re-use (e.g. text mining) is a valuable attribute of OA for some scholars; interestingly, however, it is rarely if ever mentioned in surveys which ask scholars for their own unprompted definition of OA.  That suggests to me that it is not fundamental in most scholars' minds.
>  
> The few responses to my original posting have all focused on whether the 'credo' of the BBB declarations is or is not fundamental to the underlying concept of OA.  I find it interesting that no one has commented at all on the two main points I was trying to make (perhaps not clearly enough):
>  
> 1)    The focus of OA seems to be, to a considerable extent, the destruction of the publishing industry:  note the hostile language of, for example, Peter M-R's 'occupying power'
>  
> 2)    It still seems curious to me (as to Beall) that scholars have to be forced, by mandates, to comply with a behaviour which is considered be self-evidently beneficial to them
>  
> Does this mean that everyone agrees with me on both points?!  ;-)
>  
> Sally
>  
> Sally Morris
> South House, The Street, Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex, UK  BN13 3UU
> Tel:  +44 (0)1903 871286
> Email:  sally at morris-assocs.demon.co.uk
>  
> 
> From: goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] On Behalf Of Penny Andrews
> Sent: 12 December 2013 17:04
> To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
> Subject: [GOAL] Re: Jeffrey Beall Needlessly Compromises Credibility of Beall's List
> 
> Sally, for many scholars (who do currently exist, not just in the future) textmining is their main research activity. Open licensing to do that unimpeded isn't some theoretical paradise, it's what they need right now to do their work.
> 
> On Thursday, December 12, 2013, Sally Morris wrote:
> I agree completely that 'green' and 'gold' (however tightly or loosely defined) are the means, not the end
>  
> But I still feel that the BOAI definition may be an unnecessarily tight/narrow definition of the end: optimal scholarly exchange, as you put it (or unimpeded access to research articles for those who need to read them, as I would perhaps more narrowly describe it)
> 
> Sally
>  
> Sally Morris
> South House, The Street, Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex, UK  BN13 3UU
> Tel:  +44 (0)1903 871286
> Email:  sally at morris-assocs.demon.co.uk
>  
> 
> From: goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] On Behalf Of Jan Velterop
> Sent: 12 December 2013 13:44
> To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
> Subject: [GOAL] Re: Jeffrey Beall Needlessly CompromisesCredibilityofBeall's List
> 
> But Sally, so-called 'green' and 'gold' are the means. The BOAI definition is an articulation of the end, the goal. Of course, if you navigate the ocean of politics and vested interests of science publishing, you need to tack sometimes to make progress against the wind. That's permissible, even necessary. But it doesn't change the intended destination on which a good sailor keeps his focus. If that's religion, anything is. (Which may be the case :-)). 
> 
> One mistake made by some OA advocates is to elevate the means to the goal. Another one is to confuse the temporary course of tacking with the overall course needed to reach the destination. 
> 
> In the larger picture, OA itself is but a means, of course. To the goal of optimal scholarly knowledge exchange. And so on, Russian doll like. But that's a different discussion, I think
> 
> Jan Velterop
> 
> 
> On 12 Dec 2013, at 12:03, "Sally Morris" <sally at morris-assocs.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> 
>> What I'm saying is that OA may have done itself a disservice by adhering so rigidly to tight definitions.  A more relaxed focus on the end rather than the means might prove more appealing to the scholars for whose benefit it is supposed to exist
>>  
>> Sally
>>  
>> Sally Morris
>> South House, The Street, Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex, UK  BN13 3UU
>> Tel:  +44 (0)1903 871286
>> Email:  sally at morris-assocs.demon.co.uk
>>  
>> 
>> From: goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] On Behalf Of David Prosser
>> Sent: 12 December 2013 08:37
>> To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
>> Subject: [GOAL] Re: Jeffrey Beall Needlessly Compromises CredibilityofBeall's List
>> 
>> Let me get this right, Jean-Claude mentioning the Budapest Open Access Initiative to show that re-use was an integral part of the original definition of open access and not some later ('quasi-religeous') addition as Sally avers.  And by doing so he is betraying some type of religious zeal? 
>> 
>> One of the interesting aspect of the open access debate has been the language.  Those who argue against OA have been keen to paint OA advocates as 'zealots', extremists, and impractical idealists.  I've always felt that such characterisation was an attempt to mask the paucity of argument.
>> 
>> David
>> 
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